[//] CIPHAR

Encrypted Chat for Healthcare Professionals

Healthcare workers regularly need to coordinate sensitive information quickly: a clinician consulting a colleague on a tricky case, a researcher discussing a participant's situation, a clinic coordinating an urgent transfer. Mainstream messengers are convenient but persist message history in places that may not be appropriate for protected information. Ciphar offers a fast, ephemeral alternative.

Important regulatory caveat — read this first

Ciphar uses strong encryption (AES-256-GCM) and retains no message contents past 60 minutes, but it has not been formally assessed against HIPAA in the United States, GDPR in the EU, PIPEDA in Canada, or any equivalent healthcare-data framework. There is no Business Associate Agreement available. If you are handling Protected Health Information (PHI) in a regulated context, you must run your own compliance assessment or use a service that has been formally certified for your jurisdiction.

Where Ciphar may still be useful

  • Peer-to-peer clinical discussion that does not include PHI. Discussing a presentation pattern, a treatment approach, a workflow problem — content that does not identify any individual patient.
  • Internal coordination outside the clinical system. Off-EHR scheduling, urgent staffing questions, conference logistics.
  • Research collaboration on de-identified data. Walking through anonymized cases or methods.
  • Patient-initiated contact where the patient prefers a one-time, no-account channel and where you have separately determined this satisfies your record-keeping obligations.

How a session looks

Forge a channel, share the URL and access key with the other clinician through your normal trusted channel, and discuss whatever you need to discuss. After an hour the channel is gone. If you need a record, take it outside the channel — Ciphar deliberately does not produce one.

What Ciphar is not

Ciphar is not a replacement for an EHR, a HIPAA-compliant messenger from a vetted vendor, or any system of record. Treat it as the equivalent of a private hallway conversation: useful, ephemeral, not the official record.

Read more: Security & threat model · How Ciphar works · FAQ.